Trevi Fountain

Walking through Rome, sounds can be a pretty predicable thing: cars honking, people chatting, the wind through the buildings, until, suddenly, sounds of a rushing waterfall?

Yes indeed, the infamous Trevi Fountain. You hear it before you see it and the intriguing sound draws you in till suddenly you’re in a medium piazza with a large fountain, one of the most famous fountains in the world for that matter. Unfortunately, the sounds that brought you here, aided by guidebooks, tour guides, and buses, also brings hundreds of others every single day to this little spot, turning a visit into a nightmare of navigating the crowds and vendors to a suitable spot to take it all in.

The fountain itself is absolutely amazing, to put it lightly. The first time I saw it I couldn’t speak for a moment as my mouth hung open in awe. The smooth white carvings of the massive stone gods give way as crystalline water flows through the course rocks to the sparkling blue waves below. It commands the piazza and from the side Neptune seems to hold up his hand to order his audience into silence.

But no one is listening. They are too busy yelling, stick fighting, staring at their gelato (never buy anything in the piazza while you’re here, about a block away is the best gelato I’ve ever had in Rome, so hold off temptation for this Italian obsession until you’re ready to leave), doing anything and everything except looking at the fountain. Even the people taking pictures do it only as something to cross off their list. For an instant they are as motionless as a statue, but if they just turned around and looked, they would see how true art really moves with such a still force that it is impossible to be captured with a camera. The horses charge toward the crowd and the Tritons strain to hold them still as hundreds of people sit along the cold white seats unaware of the force in front of them. It’s a madhouse of tourism, children climbing on the rocks, police whistles pierce the air, an annoying scent of tobacco everywhere, I’m constantly getting elbowed by someone and am chased out of the center by all the noise, though the second I move an inch, I’m in the way of someone’s picture. A rare few sit and soak in the artwork, and I instantly love them.

Just sit and look at something, just his leg, the musculature, the size, it’s beautiful. The more you look, the more it reveals to you. The coral on the sides, the roughness of the stone, you want to play with it, explore it, this place does not exist for visitors, but for lovers who can’t get close enough. Night falls and light dances off the caves of stone as a warm breeze drifts past. Time doesn’t deter visitors so it is best to find a seat on the side where it’s calm and lose yourself in Nicola Salvi’s masterpiece for a while before heading back into the chaos of the Roman streets.

Ancient Rome

Federico Fellini once had a dream in which he was imprisoned deep under Rome. He heard unearthly voices through the walls that said “We are the ancient Romans. We are still here.” This eventually led to the creation of Roma, his 1972 homage to the city. There is a scene in the movie where engineers are drilling underground for a subway and accidentally break into a 2,000 year old Roman house with their drill. This is an amazing thing to think about: that at any point while you are in Rome, some ancient building could be beneath your feet, lost to the world.

Before the Tiber was walled up and tamed, it used to flood Rome annually. These floods moved the earth from its banks into ancient homes, temples, theaters, etc, and brought a lot of them down. Instead of clearing everything out and fixing the mess however, the ancient Romans did what anyone today would find inconceivable: they built over it. This practice went on for years and explains why so many things are found below the city whenever anyone wants to build anything these days, an annoyance for modern Romans, but a delight to the rest of the world. For example, Pompey’s Theater (the first public theater in Rome) and three temples were discovered under Largo Argentina when construction workers began building a new hotel while Mussolini was in power. Locals were well aware of the theater’s existence, nearby apartments in Campo di Fiori were built on a semicircle, following the theater’s foundations, though the three temples came as a surprise.

As I sit in my annoyingly modern apartment I wonder what could be beneath all these floors. A forgotten villa? An ancient marketplace? A marble statue of Mercury? I’d be amazed even if was only a single sandal, preserved deep below the concrete for thousands of years.